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ASSS Questions - Cygwin

Hakaku - Thu Dec 25, 2008 4:51 am
Post subject: Cygwin

I've never used Cygwin before, so I don't really have a clue how it works. I was hoping someone around here has used Cygwin before and could explain roughly how it works and how to compile a module for ASSS that would work on Linux with it. I only have access to Windows (but the server host would be using Linux), which is why I'm asking since all I've used previously was Dev-Cpp.

Thank you in advance.

tcsoccerman - Thu Dec 25, 2008 1:19 pm
Post subject:

why was i not informed of such a thing befoe?

JoWie - Thu Dec 25, 2008 4:50 pm
Post subject:

Cygwin simply aids you in getting linux applications to work on windows.

Most of the time if you port a linux application to windows using cygwin all you need to do is a recompile without any or little modifications to the code.

Cygwin also provides a large number of applications found on linux which you can install using a nice setup GUI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin wrote:

Efforts to reconcile concepts that differ between Unix and Windows systems include:

A Cygwin-specific version of the Unix mount command allows Windows paths to be mounted as "filesystems" in the Unix file space. Mount information is normally stored in the registry. Filesystems can be mounted as binary ones (by default), or as text-based ones, which enables automatic conversion between LF and CRLF endings. (This only affects programs that call open() or fopen() without specifying text or binary. Programs installed by Cygwin's setup program always open files in binary mode when appropriate, thus avoiding the problem.) Disk drives (C:, D:, etc.) are also denominated /cygdrive/c, /cygdrive/d, etc. Windows network paths of the form \\HOST\SHARE\FILE are mapped to //HOST/SHARE/FILE.
Full-featured /dev and /proc file systems are provided. /proc/registry provides direct filesystem access to the registry.
Symbolic links are provided, and use .LNK files (Windows shortcuts) containing Cygwin-specific information, and with the "system" attribute set to speed up processing. However, native NTFS symbolic links are handled differently; using the rm deletes the linked file instead of the link itself. Old Cygwin versions handled symbolic links using plain text files with hidden attribute set and a single line of text, pointing to the destination file or directory.
The Solaris API for handling access control lists (ACLs) is supported and maps to the Windows NT ACL system.
Special formats of /etc/passwd and /etc/group are provided that include pointers to the Windows equivalent SID's (in the GECOS field), allowing for mapping between Unix and Windows users and groups.
Various utilities are provided for converting between Windows and Unix file formats, for handling line ending (CRLF/LF) issues, for displaying the DLLs that an executable is linked with, etc.
The Cygwin library also interfaces to existing Windows libraries. It is possible to call Windows functions like waveOut from Cygwin executable itself.

So it should probably be a matter of following the compiling modules on linux tutorial (except for executing every command in the cygwin console). You may need to recompile ASSS entirely with cygwin to.
Perhaps it would be easier to just modify the module so it works under windows

Hakaku - Fri Dec 26, 2008 12:48 am
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JoWie wrote:

Cygwin simply aids you in getting linux applications to work on windows.

Oh? From my understanding Cygwin can also be used on Windows to compile source to work on Linux. I'm not so sure that it "aids applications to work on windows" per se.

Cygwin.com wrote:

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows.
...
Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from source if you want it to run on Windows.
Cygwin is not a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of UNIX ? functionality, like signals, ptys, etc. Again, you need to build your apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality.

That aside, I'm not looking to know what Cygwin consists of; I know a few users have managed to recompile the entire ASSS source through Cygwin before, but in my case, I just want to compile a few modules that would work on Linux, not recompile the whole thing. The reason for this, is because the server I'd be set up on would be using Linux, while on my end I can only compile on Windows (since that's all I have).* But seeing how I've never used Linux nor Cygwin, I haven't a clue how to use the latter without getting a whole bunch of errors.

*I've no problem compiling for Windows; but wxDev-C++ is an entirely different program in comparison.

JoWie - Sat Dec 27, 2008 2:02 pm
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Hakuku wrote:

Oh? From my understanding Cygwin can also be used on Windows to compile source to work on Linux. I'm not so sure that it "aids applications to work on windows" per se.

JoWie wrote:

Cygwin simply aids you in getting linux applications to work on windows.

As in, it makes it easier for you or someone else to port linux applications to windows

What you are talking about is a cross-compiler, which does not have to do anything with cygwin "per se". GCC has one, cygwin does make it easier in this case, but it is not the intent of cygwin.

Also, why not just run a linux flavor like Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine? You need very little knowledge to follow the step-by-step instruction for compiling under linux. Cross-compiling is probably a lot harder.

Hakaku - Sun Dec 28, 2008 4:12 am
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JoWie wrote:

What you are talking about is a cross-compiler, which does not have to do anything with cygwin "per se". GCC has one, cygwin does make it easier in this case, but it is not the intent of cygwin.

Yes Cygwin does use GCC for cross compiling. I get that (since the compile command itself is named 'gcc'), and without using the term "cross-compiling" I've been stating that this is what I want from the beginning of this thread. I'm pretty sure it's been done before by some members on this forum, so I was hoping someone would be able to explain how it can used in this way.

Anyhow, although I didn't mention it (I didn't think I'd have to), I don't want to use a Virtual Machine. I've tried it before and I've simply never understood how to get anything to work properly. In one, I was basically stuck blindly using the command prompt my entire way through since it refused to store anything into memory. I tried Ubuntu, but I could never figure out how to get past a black screen that asks for my username and password (no problem entering them, it just doesn't lead me anywhere except display information that I logged in and that Ubuntu is free software, etc.). I've tried following their "official documentation", but it only tells me how I'm suppose to use my mouse... in Japanese. Talk about an amazing help when they won't let me choose my language of preference for a documentation guide.